Jess Cartner-Morley on a Forever bag - a Chanel 2.55. Photograph: David Newby/Guardian

It-bags, with their silly names and £600 price tags, are Out this year because of the recession. But before you rush to congratulate the fashion industry on this unaccustomed display of restraint, note that the hot accessory of 2009 - the Forever bag - also comes with a silly name and a silly price tag.

In fact, a Forever bag - a Chanel 2.55, such as the one I'm cuddling in the picture, or an Hermès Birkin - clocks in at more than a grand a pop, making your average 2006 It-bag look almost a bargain, and making the Forever bag a fairly Marie Antoinette-ish solution to the problem of how to square our obsession with nice bags with economic doomsday.

In the age of the It-bag, the Vogueish scenario was to spend £600 on a handbag, then spend another £600 six months later when it went out of fashion and you "needed" a new one, repeating ad infinitum until you brought the global economy to its knees with a self-destructive addiction to credit-fuelled consumerism. That little drama having played itself out, we are now offered a new model: buy one cripplingly expensive handbag, then keep it for ever.

I like this plan, because I love this bag - and I think that, were it mine, I would love it for ever. There is the small matter of where one is supposed to find a spare £1,000 to buy it. But I'm thinking, if investment bankers can get £70bn, surely us fashion-addicts can tap up the taxpayer for une petite bail-out? Non?